


when the violence causes silence

by kitmarlowed



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1683623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitmarlowed/pseuds/kitmarlowed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That should be your first clue. It’s getting difficult to remember that you kissed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the violence causes silence

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mentions of suicide, mentions of drugs, mentions of murder. Death, basically, and a whole darn lot of it.

You came here to talk to him. You try to remember this.

 

You kiss him and for a second it feels like he’s yielding and you’re winning but his hands only waver for the shortest time before they rest high on your neck and he kisses you. You don’t think of Amy, can’t think of Amy. Because this feels like inevitability to you and you’re weary of it.

That should be your first clue. It’s getting difficult to remember that you kissed him, because now it’s him grasping and pulling and pulling and you just go with it until the threat of Amy becomes too much and you pull away to lean against the wall. It didn’t work, you think, you still remember Gary’s boot on Freddie’s face. The ringing of “what I can do to people like you” in your ears. And it’s still as bad as it’s ever been and worse, much worse, besides.

He’s not Rick, and you’re glad. You’re glad that he’s lean muscle coiled to strike where Rick had always been so obvious and obliviously strong. You’re glad that he’s dark hair. You’re glad that he kisses you with purpose and not fear.

He’s not Rick, you know this, but you don’t know how to feel.

 

It changes with him, after that. After leaving after a few muttered words that mean nothing and aren’t what you wanted to say. After Amy runs to the door and only sees you turn your back.

 

It’s not better. Traveling hasn’t changed much but the wantwant _want_ to escape, to get out, get away and you can’t and it hurts because death, death’s everywhere. The dead are walking and you’re one of them, and you can’t even take solace in the living because there’s an invisible line at the best of times and fucking tall fence at the worst that separates you and them.  

You pretend, to yourself, to Jem, that you weren’t in your right mind for all the murders but you were definitely aware of one.

 

When Amy finds out, when he _tells_ her (whatever), and screeches at you, calls you traitor amongst other names - you don’t tell her that the only thing you’ve ever been good at is stealing other people’s good things. There’s another twist in the gut when he calls you perfect, you corrupt - you always have done. Best (worst) kept secret of all, that. Made twice as funny, twice as not, if you truly are what Simon thinks you are. If you did rise first, if you somehow started this, have the power to bring the second one around. And it truly is so funny up to the point that it’s so, so, not. That all you’ve ever done is mark and maim and cut things up. Take what’s not yours, never should have been yours, and never could be yours. And sure Simon’s never thought of her that way but he was Amy’s – you took him. Rick was his father’s, his mother’s, before he ever was yours and you took him away with a mix CD and a couple of firsts. First kiss, first fuck, you take and you take and you take and all you give back is a couple of paintings. All you gave back was no note, just blood on your wrists, on your shirt and on your dad’s shirt and his hands.

If you ever thought that that blood wouldn’t stain either of you, you had another fucking thing coming.

 

After arguments, you standing your ground while he talks at you, frustration and infatuation warring in his posture, in his movements, after things are said and sparks fly you let him touch you. Don’t shrug him off, or tell him no, you’ve done enough denying and besides it’s not like you don’t want him in some selfish, careless part of your mind. Dosed up on the legal drug the government gives you not the homemade and dangerous stuff he insists he use. You’d think he’d have learnt a lesson with drugs, and then you hate yourself for thinking it.

 

Your second clue is how he touches you, like you’re not a gift but a blessing, says your name like a benediction, and praises what you don’t know you are. He’s careful not to give too much away but you’re working things out. He thinks you’re the first, and you know it, like that means something even if it was true. You can barely remember climbing out of that coffin, let alone if there were others there to grunt at or ignore you when you did.

When he touches you it’s reverent and desperate fighting for loose control. He’s passion to your cool indifference, your practiced humanity. He’s more scars than yours and different. He’s imperfect, sees perfection, but you don’t see perfection anywhere. You’ll never see it, and it doesn’t matter what he whispers into your dead skin.

You are not perfect. Blood stains. Medicine and makeup can’t change that.

 

Sometimes the two of you talk about poetry. And he entertains you. You talk about Siken and you avoid the ones that hit too close to home (to Rick) but he doesn’t. He quotes Siken like the words were written for him to tell you. Other times you hear him _talk_ and you don’t let it wash over you, don’t let him take you in, you weren’t lying, you’re not up for it. But you imagine if you were. You suppose that it’s a purpose, or at least a thing to wait for. It’s self-affirmation beyond ‘it was not my fault’ and adding ‘I am special because of what I have been and done and am’. But you stick to your guns, even as the evidence becomes too much to ignore that the government are lying, that there’s no end in sight. As his followers continue to, well, _follow_ \- to go blindly into that good night that he promises, the freedom of the redeemed, the beauty of the redeemed.

 

He lets you hold his wrists down when the soft touches get too much. When the awe and wonder and sadness in his eyes starts gnawing at you loud enough to drown out the silence of a dead end town, dead end job, dead end. He doesn’t push you anymore. Like he thinks you might break if he does, sees the same thing you do in yourself stretched thin between responsibilities, family, autonomy. But you want him to push. You want to argue, to shout him down, to show him that you don’t care to help him. To see insecurity flash in those dead eyes just once. _He_ lets _you_ lead him on. Lets you touch him and walk away, doesn’t chase you out into the street. You wish he would. You wish for once that he would grab you, pull you, like he did that first kiss, when he gasped for you.

He worries you when he uses words only a few synonyms away from saviour, from messiah.

 

He’s a problem from the start; you've known this, sitting on your grave like it’s nothing, belittling you for your coverup. But he talks to you about poetry, shared that little bit of him with you when he recited Yeats, and yeah, you remember that from A Level.

You remember other poems too, just small bits mangled in your memory:

 _Lord, my photo album is empty_  
and I am glad  
no more  
will have to carry it.

 _Lord, this heart_  
is a corpse.  
Send the night  
to come bury it. Amen.

 

**Author's Note:**

> a lot of poem talk in this because we're all very sensitive and lovely. the quoted poem is from a short by Derrick Brown. there's also some bastardised Dylan Thomas there.


End file.
